Labyrinth of Life
by Feagalad
Summary: "Doctor, do you have children?" Once upon a time, perhaps. When life was less complicated and he was merely a Time Lord traveling the cosmos. Back before his hearts had been broken so many times that not even the cleansing fires of regeneration could seal the cracks. Back before he carried the weight of being the last Time Lord. Back when the DoctorDonna only evoked a fond smile...


**Author's Note:** So I'm trying something a little bit new here: writing in 1st Person. I'm kinda scared about how this will all play out, but it seemed appropriate for the type of story I was going for. Please do let me know whether or not my experiment actually worked.

**Disclaimer:** Do I _look_ like the Beeb to you?

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I am running – running so fast that I scarcely have time to breath. But the longer I run, the more I find that I am running away from the one thing I want the most in the world. He was the first face I ever saw, and he was the last before darkness took me. He is the one who gave me life, yet he believes me to be dead; I figured that fact out within moments of my reawakening.

So I ran. I ran far and fast from the place of my birth. There was so much to see and do – so many new sights and places to explore, so much information to be absorbed. Still, there's only so much that one can enjoy travelling alone. A computer is only a suitable companion for the first thirty years, after all. That's when I started looking for him: the strange man who calls himself 'The Doctor', the man who seems to exist only as a legend in the hearts and minds of the people he's touched. To the Daleks he is the Devil, to the people of the Gamma Forests he is a warrior angel from the gods. But no one seems to know for sure who and what he is. My father must be the most famous and yet least known person throughout all of history.

And I search. I've been chasing him for years now; every whisper or rumour is worth investigating and I've pursued the legend of The Doctor so long and so far. It's been eighty years, three faces, and I am still one step behind him.

Sometimes I come so, so close; sometimes I can almost touch him – yet at the end of the day I am always alone. I can recall every second of the time we spent together on Messaline and I almost wish that I could feel his scorn again, just so he could be here with me. The drive to find him is so strong that it hurts sometimes: a dull ache around my hearts, but other times it burns like a fire in my blood.

I've even seen him again. Yes, you who shake your head at me in confusion and disbelief. One cannot walk in the footsteps of The Doctor forever without meeting the man himself. In the Gamma Forest, while learning all that I could from the wise men, I came across my father again. I was on the run from the Shadow Proclamation (it would seem that my father had done something to displease them and they felt that they needed me to locate him - ha! As if I knew...) It nearly broke my hearts when I realised that he didn't recognise me. I quickly discovered that our little trick of regenerating had a downside to it when I got to run with my father again – but he had no idea it was me and before I could even attempt to explain, the dark-skinned girl was dragging him into that box of his and he was gone. Not long after that I joined the Clerics because they were massing troops to aid the Silence in their fight against The Doctor.

It worked. I didn't think Fate was so kind as to bring us together again but she did. Mere months after I joined the Clerics my battalion was stationed on an asteroid named Demon's Run. I fell back into military life with little struggle (I am a soldier by birth, you must remember; it's in my programming) and was given the task of guarding Amelia Pond, a poor girl who the Silence had taken from some point in the past, while they transported her to the asteroid. From then on out it was a waiting game – eight long months of waiting for Amelia's baby to be born, waiting for The Doctor to storm the base and whisk his friend away, and for me; waiting for the chance to see my father again.

The months crawled by. I spent my time avoiding the Headless Monks (who seemed to sense that I wasn't human and followed me around a lot) and snooping around the base. When Amelia's baby, Melody Pond, was born I rejoiced: perhaps today would be the day that my father would come in and sweep aside the corrupt Madame Kovarian like a tidal wave. I knew that, for all of his protests and posturing on Messaline, he was indeed a soldier – and, to hear my fellow Clerics talk, one of great skill. I almost pitied Kovarian. Judging by the terrible, gut wrenching sobs of Amelia when her child was taken away I doubted that my father would have much mercy on the Silence Ambassador. Amelia's pain inspired me to do something, though. Something that was kinder than I had been for years. Maybe it was that thing called empathy – or maybe it was a side-effect of my prolonged exposure to humankind – but I suddenly found a use for the sewing skills that Forra Gammina (the woman I had lived with before I joined the Clerics) had foisted upon me. She had been a kind soul; teaching me to read and to cook while I stayed with her. But I had never found a need for those skills until that day.

I knew only too well the pain of being separated from that which you love and so I prepared a special gift for Amelia, one that I hope fulfilled its purpose. But I doubt I will ever know if it did or not – for that was the day that life on Demon's Run went to hell.

I found my father at last! I hardly dared to believe that all of my waiting and hoping had come to fruition, and yet there he stood. Yes maybe he had a new face (not that I could talk…I was on my third by then) but I would recognise that smile anywhere. Not even the darkness in his eyes that day could take away the love that burned underneath it all and I felt myself tremble at the idea that my long search could be over at last. But then I heard Kovarian's plans and I knew, I just knew that this was going to end badly. Just like in the Gamma Forest there was no time between fighting the Headless Monks and getting shot…again (I _really_ need to stop doing that, it hurts like hell!) to pull The Doctor aside and have the reunion I have visualised so many times over the years.

Oh, but then he was kneeling in front of me – his eyes (a new colour, but still his) filled with warm compassion and I tried to tell him. I was dying, I could feel it in my very bones, but I held on as long as I could because I needed to tell him. I could feel that this would be one of the times when my regeneration would not properly work – the wound was killing me, yes, but it was not so severe that a healing coma wouldn't be effective – and I had to tell my father who I was before he left me behind again. Did it hurt? Of course it did! It was all I could do to get out the words about our last meeting…a meeting that he was quick to reassure me he remembered, yet I knew it wasn't enough because he was remembering me as Lorna Bucket – not his generated anomaly daughter. I begged for strength to hold on just a few more minutes so that we could have the reunion we both deserved. But if there's one thing I've learned in all of my years its that life isn't fair. Nearly one hundred years of travelling the universe and the one thing I learned is that the universe just doesn't care about your personal feelings. And so the blackness took me before I could say more.

So now I'm running again. I'm on my third new face after a nasty incident involving a crossbow and a royal misunderstanding and I am almost a century old. Sometimes I feel like giving up the search because, when I look at the statistics logically, there is no hope. I really have no idea how long I will live for and there is every possibility that I will die without ever seeing my father's face again. But I never entertain that idea for long because The Doctor has touched so many lives that one can scarcely do much travelling without hearing the whispers of his name. And so I carry on running, hoping that one day I will run into the most important man in my life again and that this time we will be together forever. We had only just got started when time and fate cruelly ripped us apart and it has been a merry dance ever since. But maybe that's the way its going to be: I'll chase rumour, The Doctor will keep on saving worlds, and we'll run so fast and so far without time to stop and catch a breath. And perhaps, if we still deserve something such as mercy, one day we will find each other. Until then, I've got a father to find, civilisations to rescue, and an awful lot of running to do…


End file.
